This last Wednesday, I attended Rebecca Stockton's final independent study presentation. Rebecca had been my mentee throughout her Senior year and had written an astounding 18 chapters, the first third of an ambitious teen novel based on Beauty and the Beast. Watching her presentation, I was filled with pride. She really knows her stuff when it comes to folklore. She's especially knowledgeable about the world surround King Arthur.

The bulk of her presentation guided the audience through the path the Beauty and the Beast story traveled through time to get to us in its most recent Disney form. Turns out it began as Cupid and Psyche in Greece. It showed up later in German in a modified form. Then it was off to France in the form most of us were familiar with. Finally, it has ended up in the United States in the form of popular Disney animated movies and musicals of the last couple decades. Actually very interesting stuff.

I was glad to meet all of Rebecca's family and many of her friends. Such a smart and funny group. Having edited Rebecca's work over the last year, I could see many of her characters and much of the energy that must of has inspired the action she added. Seeing it made me wonder how transparent my own life is in my work.

Even though driving to the Bandera area of San Antonio from where I live and work in Stone Oak was a long and sometimes annoying weekly chore and even though editing a Beauty and the Beast inspired novel meant for teen girls was not always my first choice of fun things to do, I have no regrets. What I learned from the experience cannot be measured and it did feel like that "giving" Oprah keeps yapping about. Of course, to know Rebecca and her family, giving in the charitable sense is the last thing she'll ever need. But I really felt like I was making a difference. I could see it in her writing and in the way she communicated about story, character and plot. A truly quick study.

Rebecca humorously mentioned her book's acknowledgement that she had a feeling her story would never be my favorite, nothing could be further from the truth. It will remain a treasured possession and a reminder that I had a hand in what is certain to be a very successful person's life.

Thank you, Rebecca and Godspeed Ahead.

If I've learned one thing about myself and my writing, it's that I cannot move forward if I can't solve a plotting problem or if I can't figure out what a character would do, say or see given a strange set of circumstances. I am overtaken by a feeling of dread until I've passed whatever obstacle I'm facing. I'll hash, rehash and re-rehash scenarios until doing so dominates my workday, intrudes upon my family time and derails my writing progress for sometimes weeks at a time. I'll write during these problem times, but the writing will, more often than not, consist of crap that I know while I'm writing it will never see completion. I have little doubt this is my single most problematic writing behavior.

Given a problem that requires an idea, like most creatives, I can come up with something for just about any set of circumstances. The difficulty comes in when I need to juggle many different ideas or when one idea affects the behavior, setting, rules, etc. of multiple other elements in a story. I envy those who can do such juggling solely in their heads. No. I don't envy them; I question their honestly. Come on. Really. Who can do that?

So, do I accept it. Hells no. I solves it. Here's how I've found works for me.

But some background first.

Whenever I come up with an idea for a story, I'll judge whether it's worth pursuing. Maybe the idea too similar to something else. Maybe it's smaller or larger an idea than I want to pursue at the time. Maybe I find a conflict that I recognize right away as unworkable. I've gotten pretty good at filtering for those things. But when I have found that workable idea of the right length, I start right into a story synopsis. Here's a piece of a synopsis to give you the idea of what sort of writing I do at this stage:

An Appalachian grandmother speaks to her granddaughter on the front porch on a warm Fall day. “You’ll have to pick daisies for me at the Greening Festival next Spring, Wady.” “We can pick ‘em together, Mammaw?” “No, Cherry Blossom. I won’t be goin’.” “Why not, Mammaw?” “I’ll have seen my fiftieth year come . I’ll be headin’ up the mountain to sit next to the King.” Confused look. “What do you mean, Mammaw.” A beautiful woman in her late twenties “Don’t scare Wady with that talk, Mama. She’s only eleven.” Mammaw puts her hand on Wady’s and gives her a wink.

No real structure. Just writing without breaks between staging. Nailing down the dialogue styles if it and disregarding characterization when it doesn't. All I'm doing is going from important moment to important moment. Each paragraph tends to be a beat, but even that is not key to stick to if it's slowing you down.

I wrote this way for a while until something wasn't hitting me quite right. I had originally wanted Wady to follow Mammaw to a mountain where she finds a disturbing secret. But I couldn't get her there without being told to go and the person I needed to tell her to go would be dead. And there was the issue of a "gift," a talent that needed its rules defined. In a moment I went from full-bore synopsizing to a two-headed problem. I could feel the brakes apply.

Story problems are usually a matter of choices. The story could go this way which would mean this and this would happen. Or it could go this way, in which case this and this and this would have to happen. Just thinking about it, as I've mentioned above, tends not to get my anywhere. At this point, I skipped past to the bottom of the synopsis document and, on a new page, started talking to myself. I start by asking questions. 

What is the gift, if not sight
If sight, how does this sight manifest itself

What was the pact and how does it relate to the gift AND the pennance?

What does any girl want? Love. But she must only bargain for it if that love cannot be attained. Love cannot be attained if the object of her love is taken or finds her unattractive. For this story, the more disturbing the better. Moonshine. Underaged sex. Mistaken love. A terrible wife. A wish for her death. A special death that relates to the pennance. “I will give you what you can’t have, but your blood will sign the name of each of the first-born women you who come after.” “I accept...who wouldn’t want to have what they can’t?”

During this synopsizing, I always arrive at a point where something doesn't work or I need to really nail down the rules that are going to be followed. Sometimes, a better idea will come from what I've written. In the case of the story start above, I realized pretty quickly that the backstory was going to be the real thing to read about.

So I left the part of the initial synopsis for the time, the one set in the present, and started a separate synopsis six generations in the past. I knew not all of the story in this section would be used, but I believed it would be necessary to know the history well:

While she’s out on a walk, Ruthie, a 14-year-old Appalachian girl (6 generations ago) finds a girl her own age standing by the edge of a pond. She asks Ruthie where she came from and what she’s doing and doesn’t her family worry about her out so far and blind. I’m Lurlene. What’s your name? Ruthie. Ruthie asks why she ain’t never seen Lurlene before. Lurlene says she’s blind, that she ain’t never seen no one before. Lurlene asks Ruthie if she wants to play an Appalachian game where they hold hands and spin. While spinning, Lurlene asks if she ever loved someone. Ruthie lets go, shocked that Lurlene can see inside her soul. Lurlene asks again. Yes, she loves a man right now. Thought so Lurlene says. Lurlene asks her about him. Ruthie waxes poetic about him. Lurlene tells her she used to love a man so badly that it ached like a sore tooth. Again Ruthie is amazed that they have so much in common. Lurlene asks if the other girl wants to see something. Ruthie says yes. Lurlene leads Ruthie to the edge of the pond where there’s a paw-paw tree. She looks long at the tree and eventually says...

Tasty. Better.

I ended up bringing this backstory to a natural end. By the time I was finished with it, I realized that none -- or little -- of the original synopsis was going to work. So it was back to the bottom for more brainstorming that could tie this clearly stronger backstory to a new setting in the present time. Mammaw's role had changed. What Wady had to accomplish was better defined. I needed the revelation of the secret to occur in the specific place I had worked out in the second synopsis.

Right now, I'm probably 90% done with the entire synopsis -- both past and present. I'll be going into the writing with a clear sense of where the story is going and what turns I need to take at what points and where and how I need to add important physical details. I expect the writing to flow well once I get started. Without these plot distractions, I'll be able to better concentrate on style, the stuff I believe really sells the story.

I will have been committed to writing seriously for four years at the end of this month, May 2006 being the earliest version of the head-on-a-stump story I can find and that story being the one that started the ball rolling. So four years on, how would I assess my progress?

SKILL

It's no surprise that answering that question requires more than a short answer. Even dividing that question into logical subquestions, if there are such things, requires a lengthy response. There is skill, motivation and publishing and other types of "success" to address. Let's take them in order.

When I found that earliest version of my head-on-a-stump story a few months ago, I read as much of it as I could stand. I could not stand much of it. All manner of simplest errors freckled the eight or so pages. That in itself is forgivable but I was proud enough of it that I showed it to my wife and boys. That, again, is not a bad thing, but doing so breaks at least a couple very basic rules of serious writing:

1. I showed someone a first draft before poring over it, making sure it was ready to show. For the record, never show someone a first draft unless you very much like criticism or you very much don't like the person to whom you've shown it.
2. I showed people I live with and love my work. What can one really expect besides courteous smiles and half-hearted, well-intentioned compliments and support. I recall the uncertainty and embarrassment on each of their faces. None of them sure what to say and none of them sure whether they should tell me I'm not cut out to be a writer.

The good part, the happy ending to all of this is that as I read that early story, it was like reading a child's work in many regards. I read it like an experienced writer. All the critiques, all the words written, all the books read, all the editing and blogging. I've emerged at the very least someone who can see suck a mile away and can advise -- though not perfectly -- how and whether to try to improve a piece.

But I sell myself short. Though there's no perfect way to rank one's skill as a writer, one can see the signs and get a decent idea. A pretty girl, even if she hasn't seen her reflection her whole life, can gather from the frequency and nature of reactions, compliments and inquiries a good idea of the level of her attraction. In this way, being so close to my own writing, I can say with confidence what I excel at and where I fall short. In a too-brief nutshell:

• I have a a tasteful and fairly established style
• I do character better than plot
• I am confident there is something special and yet undefined and unrefined about my writing, thus making continuing the endeavor worth while. 

MOTIVATION

Since becoming a serious writer, I'd say my motivation to continue has never waned. I've wondered a few times in the last four years whether I was good enough to write alongside the big boys but each time that doubt has come up, I've denied that goal is valid. I'm not writing to compete; I'm writing to write. There is a certain amount of unavoidable, even fun competition to it but competition is far from my central motivation. I know the type who are driven by competition. They're often successful, but theirs is the type of success I would not enjoy in most cases. No, staying motivated to write has not been an issue for me. I write and enjoy it every time. 

My motivation to blog, to mentor and to edit, however, could use some work from time to time. I tend not to blog short. Each entry takes me no less than an hour. The fact that few actually read my blog can make blogging difficult to begin, too. I just plough ahead and pretend someday people will care. ::sigh:: Regardless, there's a crap-load of stuff for a beginning writer to read, so tell a friend.

"SUCCESS"

"Success" gets italicized since my liberal leanings remind me that success can come in many forms.

In the conservative sense, my success has been limited. I've been runner-up in one contest. I've won another. And I've had a short story -- flash fiction -- published in an online magazine. On the surface, it doesn't sound like much. Okay...even well below the surface, it doesn't sound like much for having worked my ass off, threatened my marriage and gotten myself kicked out of the Awesome Dad club.

Back to the liberal leanings now. My progress to becoming the kind of writer I want to be is my success. I started writing seriously late in life. I haven't read as much as one might think one need to in order to write well. I am fighting against a fit, convincing, overly-critical mind chatter. Despite all of this, I have come leaps and bounds toward writing in the way I demand I need to before I'm comfortable to show too much to the world.

A few writers have told me to write short stories. Get recognition there then move to longer works once your name is somewhat known. Some advise me to submit anything to anywhere that'll accept the piece. Some say follow the rules when it comes to writing, submitting and marketing. There are others who say more still. The bottom line for me is that if I don't have a sense I'm doing things in the way that's right for me, that if I don't see the reason behind something, that if I don't feel comfortable doing or saying something, I'll live to regret it. More and more each day, I find something new that identifies me as a writer. My process is slow but I'm getting somewhere certain.

To me...for now...that's success.

SO, FOUR YEARS ON

So where would I put myself after four years of writing? Imperfect and patient. What I do wrong or too slowly, I'm addressing. What I do well, I'm trying to strengthen. I've come to learn better which types of stories I like and which types I write well. Sometimes they are the same and sometimes they are different. That distinction is one of the important things I'm learning.

Four years on, I know at least one thing with total confidence. I can do this and I like it enough that I expect to be writing while or not long before I eventually croak. If I haven't had some traditional form of success by then, I'll be shocked, but in no way disappointed as long as I'm enjoying the process and the life as much as I do now.